3 Classic Fiction Stories: Mailer, Johnson, Carlson

This week at the Esquire Fiction Festival, check out Norman Mailer's first story for the magazine "The Language of Men," one of the few short stories he ever wrote (April 1953), Ron Carlson's mesmerizing and graceful summer classic "Towel Season" (May 1998), and Denis Johnson's grisly story "The Bullet's Flight" (March 1989).

It was a long straight road through dry fields as far as a person could see. You'd think the sky didn't have any air in it and the earth was made of paper. Rather than moving, we were just getting smaller and smaller.

What can be said about those fields? There were blackbirds circling above their own shadows, and beneath them the cows stood around smelling one another's butts. Dundun spat his gum out the window while digging in his shirt pocket for his Winstons. He lit a Winston with a match. That was all there was to say.